Baelon The Monstrous: CH002

-CHAPTER 2-

-BAELON TARGARYEN POV-

I opened my eyes to a world of dim lights, shadows and unrelenting pain.

My body was strange, foreign and unnatural. Heavy in places it should not be. Scales stretched across my skin, faint ridges like small mountains beneath a fragile shell. My fingers twisted into claws sharper than I understood and my hair was as white as the fur of a polar bear.

The air felt cold against my delicate skin; the cloth wrapped around me rough and suffocating.

I tried to cry but only rasping sounds escaped me- sounds that felt wrong and inhuman.

I wanted to move, to fight the darkness pressing in, but my limbs would not obey- jerking weakly against my commands.

It was horrifying, to have your body be unable to respond to your commands.

But even more terrifying were the shadows of images I could not fully grasp—the murmur of voices that felt like loudspeakers, the countless dour and gigantic faces and a brief glimpse of a face filled with grief.

It was a nightmare… Last thing I remembered was going to sleep in my comfy bed and now I somehow stuck in here!

All I knew was fear. A raw, gnawing dread that settled in my chest like ice.

Even breathing was difficult for me right now; it felt like trying to keep water in your hand. A losing effort.

Then a primal thought went through my mind. I want to live!

Fight or flight response kicked in like a truck. And I prioritized my survival. I can find out how I got here later…

The grief stricken giant, quietly cried as he rocked me in his arms, the motion provided me with enough focus that I could close my eyes and not forget to breath.

How do I live? I asked myself in desperation. I could already feel this body failing me.

I did not know if I was dreaming for sure… But I have no doubt that if I was dreaming; I would’ve woken up by now. So for now, let’s operate on the thinking that this is in fact real and I have woken up as a baby on the verge of death.

This has got to be the worst Isekai ever. Those were a pretty popular genre for an anime watcher like me. It had not taken long for me to come to the conclusion of my isekai, and I would probably celebrate this fact in my later years.

But right now, I was on the verge of certain death. Think… Think… If some unknown being bothered to take the effort to reincarnate me, would they just leave me to die not even a day into the world?

I winced as I remember the countless stories about cruel gods. Yes, yes they absolutely would.

Unfortunately, I could not see another hope except the fact that maybe; just maybe, they had given me a gift that I could use to save myself.

So I did the only thing I could do at that moment. I closed my eyes and looked deep inside myself.

I don’t know what I had expected to find… But a floating orb of blue energy was not it.

Still, it meant I was right!

A warm feeling bloomed inside me, hope. I can survive… Since nothing was happening on itself and the orb was just floating the next step of action became clear to me.

With but a thought, the blue orb floated close to me. And shakily I brought forward my infant scaly hand.

-And I touched it.

For a moment, time seemed like it had stopped.

And then information exploded inside my mind. In a millisecond years worth of information of how use this… power flowed into my mind. In the end I could not help but let out a rasping chuckle.

Puppet Manipulation. A power that let me make and control puppets.

In essence it was simple, mediocre and of no use to me… But I was a medical student and knew quiet closely how bodies worked, and now along with that I had years worth of knowledge of how to use this power in just its most basic form.

My eyes opened up in the real world and I took a raspy weak breath. Looking around I found myself laying back in what was clearly a crib, as candles decorated the walls around me. This is good; I don’t want to attract attention to what I’m going to do.

I focused deep within myself. On my expanding lungs… On my beating heart... On my brittle bones and muscles…  On my fleshy organs…

And I imagined a single drop of rain dropping into a still lake… and the wave it sets off afterwards…

Bam!

With a clear mental trigger, the dams holding my power break through… iridescent energy spreads throughout my form- willing my own flesh and blood to turn into a puppet so that I may live for years to come…

It was what Sasori from Naruto- a famous puppet user from an anime I had watched and was now inspired by- had done to himself to realize his dream of immortality. But where he had to painstakingly change his body parts for puppet by hand, I had the luxury of being able to turn them into puppets that I could control with a mental flex of my mind- basically like a limb.

But of course nothing goes the way we imagine it to go…

“Cough!” I let out a raspy and painful cough, pain and shock rattling throughout my body. I grit my teeth and bear it as I desperately think. What happened? What went wrong?

It takes a few minutes before I could even stop myself from shaking and by that time I had understood what had gone wrong.

An energy issue… A freaking energy issue…

The process of turning my weak body into a pseudo puppet had ended abruptly and unfinished- not even halfway completed –because I had run out of energy I needed to use my powers…

Mana- that’s the simplest term –I had run out of mana. My weak body did not contain mana in itself to complete the process… If I want not a living being, it would not have cost that much energy to turn into a puppet but I was… Even if I did it one-by-one it would take too much time and there would be no guarantee that I would even live till that time.

If I don’t turn atleast turn some of my body parts into puppets, then there is no doubt that I would die. I slumped back against my crib in resignation. This is officially the worst day of my life…

But it seemed that the world itself had not yet abandoned me… because just as I slumped back my little baby head collided with a rocky and scaly textured surface.

I whirled my head to look at it in surprise. It is an egg… An ostrich’s egg? But I shook my head. No… those don’t look like this. This is pure green. The weirdest part was that the egg was radiating the same type of energy that I had. Mana.

Looking at it gave me a strong feeling of ‘where have I seen this before’. For a straight few minutes I kept staring at it until all of it clicked in my mind.

It’s a dragon’s egg! And I also realized just where I had reincarnated. But I did not have much time to ponder on that revelation because I had just found a golden ticket.

I touched the green dragon’s egg with my claw-like palm. Running my hand across its scaly surface and feeling wonder at the warmth and mana I could feel pulsing from inside it…

So this is the so-called Targaryen affinity for dragon taming… I idly thought in amazement. But I sighed.

Unfortunately, I can’t bond with this one. If I did then I was pretty sure I would never have a dragon for my whole life (that was how it worked right?) and in a world like this it was unacceptable when I had the opportunity.

With a flex of my will, I sent whatever recovered mana I had into the egg… According to the so-called rules of my powers this should not be considered as a living thing because it has not been born yet.

Zooom!

-And I was right. It had not even taken a fraction of the amount of mana that it had taken to turn a silver of my body into a puppet that it had taken to successfully turn the egg into my puppet.

It meant that this egg was now forever frozen, might even be said to be dead, and that I would now never hatch the drake it would have. But it had given me one lifeline that I would be forever grateful for.

Because as my puppet- the mana that it had was now mine to do with as I pleased. I focused deep within to the branch that had appeared in my mind, the branch that led towards the egg in a metaphysical way.

With a flex of my will, I siphoned and channeled all the mana that the egg had into me. At the same time I once again executed the process of turning my body into a pseudo puppet.

Sweat broke out through my body as it went under its transformation. My breath hitched as the feeling akin to ants crawling broke out both internally and outwards.

And finally after what felt like forever…

-CLINK!

It was done.

Huff… For the first time in this life I let out a deep breath of relaxation and calm, analyzing all the changes made with my mind, and with a flex of my will I stood up.

A not-even-a-day-old baby had no business standing up, but I was not normal any longer. Changing my body into a pseudo puppet had more advantages than I had thought because now I was almost superhuman…

Of course I wasn’t going to be able to turn boulders to dust anytime soon, and wasn’t going to be able to defeat much less fight a full grown man. But I was pretty sure that I was far above any kid my age, and the same will be true as I grow up.

I looked down at myself. Scaly white albino-like skin. Clawed hands with sharp fingers. Unfortunately changing my outward appearance would bring too much attention and trouble. I would probably have to scale these down as I grow up.

But then another idea entered my mind and I chuckled. Yeah… That idea is more fun.

Yawn… I idly rubbed my eyes in tiredness and plopped back down on the cot. I should probably take a rest… Don’t want to overuse my powers and body on day one.

It required more testing to make sure of everything it was capable of. And what I could improve to make it even more better.

And for the first time in my short life I was looking forward to what the next day brings.

And I slept soundly not caring about the chaos that tomorrow would bring. After all, it wasn’t going to be involving me.

…

[EDITED FOR SPELLING MISTAKES]

…

Give some suggestions what dragon do you want Baelon to have! Currently I'm planning to make it Vhagar but I'll follow whatever is the most popular choice. Also I will do an auxillary chapter explaining the basics of Puppet Manipulation for anyone interested.